Last night at a speaking event, a woman came up to introduce herself. She wanted to share with me that my book Guarded by Christ helped her endure one of the most difficult years of her life. She talked about crying through sleepless nights and reading the book all through the night as her comfort and reminder of God’s presence with her when life felt like it was falling apart.
She held the book and cried. When she couldn’t sleep, she held the book and cried. She wasn’t alone because I was with her through those scattered words on the page, the ones that I wrote through my own times of sorrow.
As a hundred women swirled around the meeting location, I sat alone with this one woman at a table. I listened to her sorrow and how God used my little book to intersect her life when she needed another voice of hope to cling to. The voice was my voice that shaped scripture for her for on those long, weeping nights. That voice was my voice that helped her feel understood and not alone. And my writing voice reminded her of Him–the One always with her and guarding her life.
I felt how sacred writing is and how we write because of the reality of someone searching for hope in the dark night through the words about Jesus we arrange on a page. We write for that one person who holds a book to her heart all through the night.